Cabin Crafted

Author: Cabincrafted1

  • Movin’ Day

    Last evening was moving day. The hens were herded and/or caught in a big fishing net or by hand and relocated to the Chicken Palace with food, water, scratch, 3 nesting boxes, and an old ladder that was cut in half and propped at angles against the roof beam to provide with with all their needs for the next week or so until they are comfortable in there and know it is “home” from now on. I expect today’s stress and the strange digs will reduce egg production this week, but that is the price I needed to pay to be able to clean up and repair the coop for the littles. The rain cooperated just long enough for me to get the move accomplished.

    It was also moving day or actually transplant day for the young tomatoes. I wanted to wait a bit longer, but the second batch needed to go in the hydroponic garden, so the first dozen were transplanted into plantable 4 inch pots, placed in a plastic container that was the perfect size and they will begin outdoor days and indoor nights until danger of frost has passed and they can go in the ground. Once they were good sized sprouts, I used another dozen of the plugs to start 4 more tomatoes because daughter wanted 6 and I generally plant 8 or 10. Since the starter tray for the plugs holds a dozen, I started some Thai basil and some Cilantro to also share with daughter. Those had sprouted or at least germinated and needed to be under the light and fan, so they are in a position to be ready to put in the ground about the time of the last frost and a short period of hardening off.

    Before putting the second set of starts in the 12 cell hydroponic garden, the water was dumped, the container cleaned out, and refilled with fresh water and plant food.

    I’m looking for another one of the resin half barrels that I have used for raspberries and often for flowers and herbs. I will transplant some of the larger herbs from the smaller hydroponic garden that Son 2’s family gave me for Christmas and start a new batch of the ones I use regularly to grow in the house. I do like clipping them and using them in salads and for cooking.

    I’m off shortly to my first event in a year. Founder’s Day at Wilderness Road Regional Museum, dressed in costume, set with wheel, spindles, wool, and some items to perhaps sell. It is outdoors and the rain chances during the 4 hours is 70% for two of the hours, zero for one, and 40% for the other. I will set up in the loom house or on a porch to demonstrate Revolutionary War period fiber preparation. My dark blue skirt will be paired with a dark blue mask which certainly wasn’t part of their garb, but will be part of mine today.

  • Saturday Projects

    Saturday’s are drive thru breakfast out and on to the Farmer’s Market. A couple of days ago, I reseeded lettuce, spinach, kale, and Lacinato kale in the garden. At the market this morning, I scored spinach and Lacinato kale starts and came home to add them to the mini head lettuce starts from a few weeks ago. They will provide greens before the seed is up and providing. I didn’t bother to water them in because the afternoon and tomorrow are rainy. Mid week, I will cover them at night for three nights because we have three nights of upper 20’s expected.

    Once a few dandelions coming up around cardboard in the paths were dug and the mulch respread, I set about making a “chicken run” from the end of the chicken’s enclosure to the Chicken Palace where the big girls will be herded this evening and locked in to acclimate to their new digs.

    That is the chicken palace behind the burn barrel which is making short work of all the scraps from the old boxes and the rotted barrel staves. I just kept adding wood until it was all gone from outside the garden. Whatever is left after I build the compost bins from the remaining boxes, will be burned another day. I sat out near it with a garden hose at the ready until it began to thunder and lightening and I moved to the inside of the garage where I could keep an eye on it. Once it was just a smoldering layer in the bottom, the rain began hard. I expect it is mostly out now, but the new plants got watered in.

    One of the display pieces, I have wanted for vending events is a decorative ladder. I have looked for one unsuccessfully, so yesterday, a trip to the big box hardware store and a purchase of two oak boards, two oak dowels, and a package of screws gave me the supplies I needed to make my own. It is put together, given one coat of poly stain and finish and ready to take with me tomorrow to the museum for Founder’s Day.

    It is the same height and rung spacing as my folded rack seen in the left of this photo below.

    Tomorrow, I will leave the piece that can attach to the table at home and use the rack and ladder to display items for sale. I expect it will be too warm to sell many knits, but maybe the yarn and woven bags might sell and I am going to hold an end of season sale. What I am taking is packed in the car and ready to go.

    The chicks were moved to the garage last week into the large RubberMaid water tank to give them more room. At 4 and 5 weeks old, they are no longer the cute little fuzzies that they were, they are gawky teenagers with feathers, long wings and a propensity to try to escape whenever the screens are moved off to add food, water, or clean shavings. I have raised the heat lamp well above them, but left the heat tables in. They may need it mid week with the colder nights, but they are only a couple of weeks from moving to the coop. Daughter is going to loan me her power washer and I am going to powerwash the inside of the coop, repair a few pieces of outside trim, and repaint or stain it before I move them over. The narrow run off of the pen is going to be removed and the pen enlarged to give them more running around space until they are large enough to free range. I will cover the top of the pen with bird net to keep the hawks from picking off the chicks to feed their own chicks. I lost three young birds a couple of years ago before the pen and run were covered.

    There are still 15 in there, but 3 or 4 are so much smaller than the others, I need them to get some size before I can turn them loose in the pen.

    After I move the adult birds this evening, I will work on the coop and fencing next week and get it all ready for the littles.

  • Environmental concerns

    Each day I see another news article about the amount of plastic in our oceans and our landfills. Another article that reiterates that every piece of plastic that has been made still exists. Another article, that most plastics can’t be or aren’t being recycled.

    I drive by the local hay storage fields and see large round bales wrapped in non biodegradable white plastic. As the winter moves into spring, those fields are littered with the white plastic that was torn off of the bale before feeding it to the herds or flocks. I see that plastic in the streams and creeks that flow down to the New River, on to the Ohio River and the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico.

    I try to not buy or use one use plastic plastic, but with Covid, you can no longer take your reuseable cup or mug to be refilled, if you want to eat out, it is take out and though we are seeing more and more use of cardboard containers, there are still styrofoam clamshells used by some food places. When you go in the grocer or even the Farmer’s Market, items are in plastic, so it is difficult to avoid.

    Each year I stress when the garden starts providing food that doesn’t get canned in reuseable glass jars with reuseable canning lids, food that is destined to be frozen like peas and beans because the available containers are plastic bags or boxes. I tried wide mouth glass jars one year and had a lot of breakage. Yesterday an ad popped up for compostable 32 ounce bamboo fiber containers with snap on lids. They are hand washable, can go in the microwave or even the oven up to certain temperatures and when you are done, they compost in 90 days. That sounds like a winner. I can freeze peas in a smaller silicone bag and then remove them and pack several lumps in one container. Blanched green beans can be frozen on a cookie sheet and packed loosely. The snap on lids can be labelled with paper tap or written directly on the lid. I ordered a 50 pack to try this year. I hope that I have found a more environmentally friendly way to save my produce that I don’t want to can in glass for the shelves.

    Our state has recently enacted legislation that will ban styrofoam and single use plastic by 2025. I see even Glad coming out with alternatives to plastic. I hope there is more of this type of restriction and innovation and less plastic in our future. I wonder how many of our health problems are the result of the rapid increase in the use of plastic in our environment and our everyday life. We already know that the industry has had to change the formulation to remove certain chemicals. Lets hope for change.

  • Rainy Day Olio – 3/25/2021

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

    My Facebook memory for the day shows snow 3 years ago, so I have to keep reminding myself that it is spring on the calendar, but still 6 weeks to the last average frost. I am not patient when it comes to the garden. Once I start, I want to plant, to harvest, to start putting by for the off seasons, then I look at the pantry shelves and freezer and realize we haven’t used all of last year’s stuff up yet. I have never had much luck starting my own seeds that aren’t direct sown, but the new hydroponic unit with 12 plugs has the healthiest little dozen tomato plants. The unit has LED lights and a gentle fan so the plants are sturdy and only several inches tall, not shooting for the moon as leggy starts.

    Eventually they will be transplanted into 4″ plantable pots and start spending part of each day outdoors on the deck, but not yet. Most of the starts of spinach, kale, and mesclun greens that I transplanted and then covered with plastic didn’t get enough water from the rains and few survived. The 8 mini head lettuces that I bought at the Farmer’s Market as transplants are doing great. Yesterday after morning showers and before today’s rain, I direct sowed more lettuce, kale, lacinato kale, and spinach in the bed and left the plastic off. I see no frost nights until late next week and I will cover them just for the nights then.

    I have resumed my love affair with spindles over the past year. They are so portable and can be put down on the side table and left until I’m ready to return to them. They can be put in a tin and dropped in my bag to take with me in the car, and the smaller ones can even be used when hubby is driving as long as the road isn’t too winding. On a spindle I can create fine, even, consistent yarns, the small balls wound together and plied on either a larger spindle or even on my wheel. My wheel has suffered neglect this year. To use it by my chair, I have to move the ottoman and move the wheel every time I need to get up. But day before yesterday, I chose to pull it over and decided to finish spinning a 5 ounce braid of very soft wool/silk blend I had started on the spindles. It took me two days to finish spinning two very full bobbins and plying it on my jumbo flyer and large bobbin. I told hubby I thought it was about 1000 yards of singles spun.

    I finished plying it last night and let it sit overnight before winding it off this morning. I was close, it is a two ply yarn, lace weight, and finished at 484.5 yards, so it was 969 yards of singles. It is a very pretty, soft and drapey yarn that has been washed and is drying now. The spindle is the one my hubby gave me for my birthday last November and it is spinning wool for my breed blanket. I should have 14 or 15 squares finished by the end of the month. I will lay them all out and take a picture then.

    When a spindle isn’t in use, it is safely nested in it’s own little compartment on thick felt in this box. When out and about, it travels in a tin like one of these, nested on a bed of the fiber being spun on it.

    On Sunday, the museum where I used to go and spin in costume, regularly, is scheduled to have Founder’s Day. As I am fully vaccinated and the event is supposed to be outdoors, I plan to attend as a period spinner with wheel and spindles, combs, and cards, and wool I washed to process for spinning. The event has other re enactors, carriage rides (pre-registered) through town, but the weather app is showing a 90% chance of rain. I can’t take a wheel, yarn, and knits out in the yard in the rain. I guess I will wait and see if the forecast improves or see if I can be on the roofed porch, still “outdoors,” but protected. I will be so glad when it is safe to resume life again.

  • Vacation in the mountains

    As a child we spent a week every summer in the Virginia mountains having travelled from the coast. It was a big “family” reunion, family being both biological and folks we saw but once a year, every year in the same cottage.

    When we had children of our own, there were a few visits to the same location and other visits to Big Meadows on the Skyline Drive in the mountains of Virginia on the opposite side of the Shenandoah Valley.

    Before children, I backpacked in the mountains with a Trail Club and then both sons became Scouts and I took up backpacking again, going as one of the troop adults on many weekend trips, a couple bringing us near where we currently live.

    As our children became old enough to leave home or stay home alone, hubby and I began taking one weekend a year with my Dad and Stepmom to a B&B somewhere away from both of our homes near the coast, usually to the Piedmont of Virginia, they would plan one year and we would plan the next.

    As retirement approached, we began looking for a place to build a retirement home and I wanted to move to the mountains. I was most familiar with the Shenandoah Valley areas, but land was so expensive there. Son 1 had hiked the Appalachian Trail and then rode his bicycle from New Orleans and both times coming though the south western part of Virginia. He suggested we look here for land and we found our farm in the Virginia Mountains, a few short miles from the Appalachian Trail, near the West Virginia line, in the county that was the birth place of my maternal grandfather. We built our home here.

    I have learned old homestead skills, canning, spinning, raising chickens, making soaps, some herbal medicine knowledge to make healing salves. Along the way, got involved in the history of the area and began to do some 18th century re-enactment using my spinning and fiber history.

    We have a lovely small University town only 15 miles away, trails to walk, ponds and lakes to visit, ever changing flora and fauna. I feel like I’m always on vacation in the mountains now.

    Coltsfoot blooming on a trail.
    Winter resident geese at a local pond. They usually stay until their young fledge.

  • It’s done, it’s done

    Yesterday and today were glorious dry, blue sky, spring like days and I was going to rest and recover. The storms attacking the southern states are headed our way and tomorrow it is going to rain and rain and rain. I have been trying since December to get VDOT to come clear our culvert and re dig the ditch above it as the crusher run from the last maintenance has the ditch filled almost to the road grade. I have filed work requests online, talked to them on the telephone, filed another work request and still no action. Yesterday, DH and I went up with the tractor, a garden fork, and a shovel and the two senior citizens managed to get a 5 foot area cleared above the upper end of the culvert, however the pipe itself is about half full of debris and the ditch above is still full of gravel and sand. We don’t want the rain to create gullies in our driveway. I filed a follow up report with VDOT to let them know that we managed to barely open it but it still needs work, but I doubt it will come to any good. When I filed one last July, they came and did the work but left the work order open. When I file again, they just close the new work order, leaving the July one open. When I called, I tried to get her to close the July one and leave the December one open, but she closed December and wrote comments. So that day of rest and recover was shot.

    Today we went for a walk on the rail grade, then went and got the remaining bags of mulch and since I didn’t rest yesterday, I went ahead and put down more weed fabric and mulched the back side that I had run out of mulch doing a few days ago. There are 3 bags left to use after the garlic is harvested and that last box is closed in. I dug up most of the comfrey that was on the side of the garden and moved some of it up to the upper corner where last year’s compost had been and some of it to the walled garden I built last summer. That will allow me to mulch up to the top of the box that is unfinished for now.

    To make sure the new starts are well protected from possible hail tomorrow and three nights of freezing temperatures, I reinforced the mini greenhouse I had built. After the storms tomorrow and before Friday night’s 27 degrees, I will add an insulation layer of some sort over it as well.

    The chicks are now 3 1/2 weeks and 4 1/2 weeks old. Three of them still look like cute little chicks, but most of them are gawky adolescents with long legs and little feathers sticking out all over the place, and they try to fly out of the brooder every time I move the baby gate that is on the top.

    It doesn’t take long for them to cease being cute little fuzzy creatures. After the cold weekend, they will be moved to the big feed tank brought into the garage to give them more space. They empty the feeder and the water daily now. In about a week, the big hens will be moved to the other coop and locked in for about a week to get them used to that location and the smaller coop will be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized so it can get dry before the little ones move out there in mid April, where they will be locked in for a week to get used to their new home. Some dustbath holes need to be filled, the run possibly shortened as there are some spots where the smaller birds could get under the fence.

    Knowing that the run will be a muddy mess tomorrow, after I locked up the hens, I tossed down a new layer of old hay so I don’t fall on my keister when I go over to let them out in the morning.

    Somehow in my efforts to feed all the critters, lay mulch, and clean me up afterwards, I managed to cut my left index finger (I’m left handed) and my right second finger so now both hands are sore. All the garden effort and the skin injuries have certainly cut into my spinning and knitting time so far this month. I have managed to spin enough of the Dorset Horn to knit two squares for my Breed Blanket Project, and just enough to count for the other challenge has been spun. Maybe with the rainy days ahead and with nothing else that can be done in the garden until planting time, I can finally rest and recover and maybe get some more spinning and knitting done.

    This is the first square for March, now there are two.

    I just finished reading “The Salt Path” by Raynor Winn, a memoir of a year in her life with her husband after double devastating events. It certainly caused me to stop and be thankful for what I have and my health, even if I come in sore, bruised, and battered from my farm and garden work. It is well written and well worth the time to read.

    I would like to read her second book, but it isn’t available at our library.

  • I want to say I’m done, but I’m not.

    We went out and bought a dozen more bags of mulch. I wrestled some stubborn grass clumps that had come up over and through the weed fabric, laid more where needed, put down the last of the cardboard in the narrow paths, and started spreading the mulch. I had hardly begun when a light cold drizzle began. It wasn’t supposed to start raining until tonight. I worked on through until I had the gate side, the narrow paths, the south end, and the blueberry bed mulched and realized that there were only two more bags, not enough to do the chicken run side and the rain was getting more persistent, so I quit.

    These are before and after pictures of the entire garden before this week’s work.

    This was last year after I tried to reinforce the thin cedar boxes, dug out the mint bed where the white bag is laying and put down hay as mulch. Seeing the tomatoes planted in the upper right box and the comfrey up beside it, it was later in the season.

    Here it is after the week’s work, taken from the opposite end. The plastic over the young greens is about where the mint bed was dug out for perspective. The large box to the left of the barrels is where there is no box in the upper photo’s top right. I tried to grow corn there last year unsuccessfully. The boxes are sturdier, the mulch is shredded wood mulch over cardboard or weed fabric. The two remaining bags of mulch awaiting some sunshine or at least no rain to finish the last bit on the right side. You can see two of the old boxes that didn’t crumble when I pulled them up, leaning against the fence. They along with 4 more you can’t see in the upper right corner are going to be taken apart and the boards used to create a two bin compost pile up in that corner and that area will be mulched only with hay. It has been a lot of work, but I am hopeful that it will reduce work in the long run and will produce better harvest in some areas that did not grow well.

  • Digging and Building are Done…

    . . . well nearly. We only had light sprinkles yesterday and no rain in forecast today or tomorrow in spite of the earlier prediction. Hey we live in Virginia, if you don’t like the weather, stand there for 30 minutes and it will change. After the usual Saturday morning breakfast run and trip to the Farmer’s Market, where I purchased with my already harvested greens, 8 healthy Mini Head Lettuce plants. Yesterday afternoon, we bought two more Blueberry bushes, so after we arrived home, the garden clothes were pulled out, the bushes planted at the ends of the two rows of the other 6, the lettuce starts planted in one of the new boxes. and the tools brought out to finish the heavy work that was remaining. The box away from the garlic was dug in and built, filled nicely with the soil from the two boxes it replaced and some of the compost beside it. I didn’t want to leave the box that incorporates part of the garlic bed and below it undone. The cedar boxes are not truly 4 feet, so I dug outside of it and built 3/4 of the box around it. When the garlic is harvested, the 4th side will be added and the soil from that box added to the new larger, deeper one.

    This is the box I cheated on. The new 8 foot sides end about halfway up the sides of the cedar box. I may add one more board on the near end and fill that box deeper. The other one built today is on the opposite side of the 4 x 4 box and the asparagus bed that still has fence on three sides of it.

    From up the hill, you can see all the new boxes and all the old cedar boards that need to be removed. Two of the old cedar beds are stacked in the left corner, that is the compost area. Peas, onions, garlic, asparagus, and lettuce starts are in. The flat of spinach, kale, and mesclun mix are growing nicely and after the early week freezing rain that is expected, they will go in the garden as well. I will protect the new head lettuce plants with a translucent plastic box for early week’s freezing rain.

    We bought a roll of weed mat as cardboard is not available and tomorrow, if I can bend after today’s efforts, I will finish putting it down and getting mulch on it. All that will be left to do is plant when the time is right, keep the weeds down in the beds themselves, all relatively easy tasks compared to what has been done. As I dug earthworms, they were added to the new beds that are bagged soil on cardboard to get them started in those beds. It has been a strenuous week that has seriously cut into spinning and knitting time, but the garden looks good, has boxes I can sit on the edges of, and is ready for the seeds and plants that will fill our freezer and larder shelves with goodness to enjoy. Since all the tomato plants that have been started are determinate plants, I may just stake them this year and build the A frame trellis next year. If I ever get the energy to move more wood, I may box the asparagus bed and build a new long box around the blueberries, though I think weed mat and mulch is all that is necessary there.

    The peach tree, maple trees, and other fruit trees are beginning to bud out. I hope we don’t have a fruit killing freeze.

  • Git’r Done Day

    Today, according to the CDC, it is safe for me to be out in the world again, still with some precautions. Safe to give my fully vaccinated daughter a hug, safe to go in a store, still masked. We took off to Lowes and replaced the dishwasher that failed during the pandemic and arranged to have it delivered and installed in about a week. It will be nice to have that appliance again. Between the extra handwashing, dishwashing, and garden, my hands are a dry mess.

    From Lowes we went by Daughter’s house, as she is working from home and her kiddos are getting virtual classes this year, and I got my hug and a conversation without a mask on. What a simple pleasure.

    Another load of raised bed soil was purchased and because I didn’t want to rearrange the pile of heavy wood again, the 4 x 4 box that I failed to bring wood down for, was replaced with a commercial metal one. It is assembled, filled, the remaining bagged soil added to some of the other beds as amendment or fill soil to be topped off with more of the soil from the excavation of the upper 1/3 of the garden to dig in the two 4 x 8 beds when I can comfortably bend and tote, probably next week after the several days of rain showers pass. This evening, the onions and peas will be planted. I am considering adding a couple more blueberry bushes to the area where they planted because the box they are in has deteriorated and really isn’t needed as long as I keep the area mulched, so I can expand outward. That requires a trip to the nursery to see what they have. Lowes had some, but I prefer the ones from the nursery if they are in. The heavy joist board that I cut yesterday and left in the yard because I was just too tired to move them again were moved into the garden beside where they will be built. The rest of the scraps cleaned up and the tractor put away for now.

    I’m pleased with the progress that has been made this week. I need more cardboard so I can finish mulching the bottom 2/3 of the garden. While I was working I did remove the straw mulch from the asparagus bed and got it weeded too. The photos, just don’t show how much slope this garden has. Once the remaining two boxes are dug in and built and the rest of the mulch laid, there will be a clean up of barrel staves and bands and rotting cedar boards from the old boxes. The new box looks so out of place with the rebuilt ones, but it is metal and won’t rot or rust.

    Though we still have frost days ahead, I think the deep freeze days are past, so the fig was unwrapped. We will wait and see if it produces new leaves showing it survived the winter.

    The rain showers in the forecast will provide me with a few days of rest from heavy garden work. Only one more day of it is ahead. I am pleased with the sprouts that are showing, more goodies to be planted in the gardens in the coming weeks and healthy food from our garden in the near future.

    The little chicks are growing fast and going through their food and water quickly. The first batch are now more than 3 weeks old and getting feathers, trying out their wings. The 2 week old ones looks so much smaller as the older ones legs are stretching out like teenagers, no longer the cute few day old chicks.

    It has been a productive day with some seed planting to be done after dinner, then a couple days rest before I finish the garden set up for the year.

  • No rest for the weary

    After a sleep is optional night, I got up fairly early and decided to continue on the garden quest. As I lay in bed not sleeping last night, I decided to combine more of the boxes on the uphill end of the garden. They were rotting away, so this morning, I built a 4 x 4′ box in front of the asparagus but moved it downhill about a foot. I leveled the path below it and used that height as the grade for the box so lots of shoveling, but it did put some good composted soil in the 14′ bed I built yesterday, less will have to be purchased. The new box was set in place and filled with soil some from the paths beside it. The remaining 4 boxes up there are on either end of the asparagus bed and beside the one I built. They are going to become 4 x 8 foot boxes and will require a lot of digging in, but there is so much good soil there and where the compost pile was until the chickens spread it last fall, that there should be less needed for purchase. By the time I finished the box building and soil shoveling, it was time to fix lunch. Then I drove the tractor back up to the barn and hauled a 16′ double joist, two 8′ double joists, two 12′ 2 x 10s, and miscellaneous boards to use as ends for the boxes. The 16′ joist was cut in half, others trimmed to matching size or squaring off ends, and another long box was built, replacing a 4 x 8′ and a 4 x 4′ rotting cedar boxes.

    I ran out of steam before I could build the next 4 x 8′ one on the upper end of the garden. It will require a lot of digging to level it and bring it down even with the smaller one I built this morning. The other 4 x 8′ one can’t be built until the garlic is harvested, but the wood is cut and will be stacked beside where it will be placed. Everything I did today is replacements. There is still a 4 x 4 that needs to be replaced, but I didn’t haul enough wood down to tackle it.

    Several more bags of mulch were applied between the new boxes from yesterday and this morning. The garden is looking good.

    Tomorrow will be 2 weeks since I got my second vaccine, so we are going to go dishwasher shopping. Maybe afterward, I will tackle the 4 x 8′ box that can be built now and Friday morning, before the rain showers begin, I will plant peas and onion in some of the newly finished beds.

    I have lots of rotting cedar boards. The more sound ones will be used to build a compost bin in the corner of the garden near the hen coop. The rest will go in the burn barrel and burned when the spring burn ban is lifted.

    For now, I’m going to just sit with me feet up for a while and redo my garden plan now it isn’t based on the old box sizes.